Wednesday, September 16, 2015

What to Leave Out

The September 14, 2015, issue of The New Yorker has a John McPhee article titled "Omission." Its subject is leaving out material in writing to strengthen, not diminish, the piece.

Not surprisingly, McPhee quotes Hemingway, who famously said, "If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will feel those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water."

McPhee cites other quotations of the less is more dictum from the worlds of visual art and architecture, but doesn't mention music. So here are two lines that suit the subject:

"I always listen to what I can leave out" -- Miles Davis.

"It's taken me all my life to learn what not to play" -- Dizzy Gillespie.

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